Packing my bags, getting ready to be back in the city I love. San Francisco, the city of freaks.

Well, I came here because this City is fantastic. I remember driving home from a court appearance in Oakland one afternoon and feeling my heart just swell looking at the City. Even though it’s damn cold and I had to throw away all my tank tops and open toed shoes, I had found a place where I could waive my freak flag. I had found a place where my liberal mouth was not met with mute horror but smiles and agreement. I had found a place where I could be as weird as I want to be, and believe me, I want to be weird, regularly.

via I Live Here

My Dell showed the utmost dedication by serving me five long years, much longer than most people expect from a Windows laptop. My expectations were simple: a place to store files, do word processing, and check email. But I got so much more than that. We had built a story together: I went through changes and stages in my life as it stayed dedicated through it all.

It was the vehicle through which I enacted out my boyhood fantasies. It enabled me to become an ace sniper, powerful barbarians and crafty wizard through the realities its CPU and graphics-card rendered.

It stood by me as I focused as a student and online poker player. It took the beats of my sub-par performance stoicly watched me slowly grow my skills and assets.

It took the heavy beating of high-resolution images and resource intensive software like a champ. As I venture down the path of programmer & designer, I thought we would reach glorious heights together…

But now its days are done. It finally got the blue screen of death this week and I must unfortunately begin to say goodbye.

My work has been impeded now that my laptop’s gone. I was using it in the office for the few months I’ve been working, now they have me on a Mac and its not the same. Sure its flashy, clean, and fantastic, but it can’t even run the software I need to do my job. As an aside, I wonder if theres software that can fake a bluescreen to get out of work (theres probably money in creating that).

I’m forced to work from home, and boy have things slowed down. Not that I had many important files there, but I got a real pleasure in carrying my work wherever I went. Cafes, libraries, even my own couch is closed off to me as a workspace now. My back, butt and neck cramps from the chair I sit in. I’m shaken mentally and physically and now I have to consider buying a replacement.

Dell, I’ll miss you. Things won’t be the same without ya.

Learn something new.

My goal is to become a product designer.
With a modest programming background and no artistic training, I guess you could say I’m learning something new… Standing at the entry point of an emerging field, with everything to learn in front of me, I’m actually very excited. Being a noob isn’t always that bad.

Work harder than everyone else.

There’s always someone working harder than you.
Having been rejected from jobs or clients, I go back to this important maxim. Out of hundreds of applicants, are you really the hardest working? If you’re looking for a job or a new client, there will always be better people out there. If you’re not the best candidate, there’s not a reason to select you. You’ve actually got to be the best.

Do the leg work.

Don’t drop the ball.
Give genuine responses.
Show care.
Solve problems, don’t make them.
Now’s a good time to apply these time-honored principles.

Surround yourself with fighters.

Who seems to never stop working?
Who challenges themselves regularly?
Who’s a fighter?
I won’t let you know when I find them,
I try to hold on to them for myself.

Take risks.

If you know me personally you know I have no problem with this one.

Shut up.

No whiners here

You just suck. << The original article this response was written to.

But our mentors don’t have to be away in dream-land.  Needless to say, some of the best mentors are those in your immediate life who will make a greater impact on you than those figures who we will never have contact with.  Here are a few inspirational figures I have recently interacted with:

• Success in life and work starts with the proper attitude towards both.  Jason Seiden has guided me towards more personal, as well as professional satisfaction, by channeling passion through a method of effort, assessment, and mutual benefitting relationships.

• The people at my house are mentors, for they remind me that life is not meant to be taken that seriously.  For what ends are we working for if not to enjoy life with laughter, love and friendship?

• With certain people we create chat.   With others we build conversations into experiences of wisdom and perspective change.  On his blog, CROOKS AND GRANNIES, Mike gives an attention to the written word I sometimes forget is so important.  An effort which wrings itself away from the methodology of blogging, his writing reminds me of our common academic roots in humanities and critical theory.

• Can a mentor be younger than you?  Yes they can, when they’re damned talented.  Enter serena style and ary mega.

• Willy Franzen(1 Day 1 Job) is passionate about finding people jobs, and finds them for a group that (arguably) has had the hardest time finding them in at least a quarter century.  I apply his thinking all the time mentoring my friends in their job hunt, but this guy takes it to the next level.

Also planned for the day:

• reading up on card sorting for researching patients, doctors, and stakeholders at Children’s Hospital Oakland
• Getting ready for 31 day blogging challenge. He suggests a SWOT analysis and getting GOOGLE analytics (is this any better than the stats I get from WP?)
• JAVA homework’s due today… dah!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whU_YrZVhy0]

Dj Zeno (Krimpnasty) and HoneyKnuckles put together a weekly podcast at Sanguine Sunday, an hour and more of exploration into hiphop and its predecessor genres: soul, jazz and funk. Hiphop has a dense history, with roots reaching into many musical disciplines.  A wonderful expression of escape, reflection, resistance and celebration, hiphop and the music featured on Sanguine Sunday pays tribute to the heritage and interconnectedness of the hiphop community. They illuminate the fact that good hiphop music firmly understand its place in history and their roots to the past. Taking the form of sampling, linguistic reinvention, and remixing, the elements of hiphop music connect seamlessly to its past and define its future.

If you’re an active listener of hip-hop music, that is, you’re enlightened enough to investigate where the music you’re listening to comes from, I’d definitely check out Original, a mixtape by DJ Neil Armstrong.  A staple of the NY underground scene, this man has played with greats such as De La Soul, The Roots, Company Flow and Biz Markie, even Kanye West gave him a place on stage with him. His mixtape is a personal favorite of mine, because as you’ll notice in the track listing, he juxtaposes a modern classic with its soul and funk predecessors.  A reflective and referential album, it’s just the type of listening I experience everytime I listen to hiphop music.

know your history

My claim: BSB could do more to harness and establish their presence on the web. To do so, I see three actionable items for their webpage: 1) Improving their search engine visibility by creating keyword – rich content, 2) Include community responses from Yelp and other sources to express their partnership with the Oakland neighborhood and 3) Incorporate visual content with photos and dynamic design to incite curiousity and visual appeal which are so key to the Bakesale Betty experience.

This would allow a three-part benefit: increase customer counts, express community partnership, and align its web identity to better match the offerings of BakeSale Betty

1) Search engine optimization. This means creating more content, using focused language to describe the offerings of the bakery, and language that people would use in search queries which might lead them to the bakery. This includes terms describing the food, but also terms relating to the local, neighborhood feel and approach that they take to food. In the current state of the website, anyone searching for a delicious bakery in Oakland might not find it using Google (as shown in PART 1 of this series). The homepage of their website is dedicated to the founder and chief proprietor, Alison Barakat. (And even despite that dedication, it is currently at the bottom of the list of results from a Google query on her name) From an SEO perspective, this could be changed to include a description of the bakery itself to increase its page rank on Google search queries.

2) Situating itself as a partner of the Oakland community. Currently, on the BSB website, there is no acknowledgement of the words of the praise written in the news, blogs, and on Yelp from Betty’s followers. There is an abundance of visual real estate on their page where they would be able to place quotes from their customers, photos of people who have written for them, or bios of the people who work for them. By referring to the community, they could acknowledge their relationship with it and the website would represent the very human-centric business they are running. It would express thanks to their supporters for words of praise, and provide incentive to its customers to continue to speak highly of the bakery. As a community partner and local business, BSB has not represented themselves fully on the web, since one can hardly tell they are located in Oakland and it

3) Richer non-textual content. A dynamic web page could communicate more about the Bakesale experience, and draw people in through curiousity and communication. Photos are a great way to communicate the tangible offerings: beautiful and tasty pastries, and chicken sandwiches. Doesn’t this photo make you want to bite into it?

photo by c(h)ristine

It sure makes me hungry. An additional possibility for rich content are to create bios for the BSB team, emphasizing the non-tangible offerings of the BSB experience. Having been a patron there for a short while, I can tell that these people really value customer relationships and I see it with every visit. They are doing their best to recognize people and create a repore between them and community. By introducing some of the members of the team on the website, I believe there could be even less of a barrier between them and their patrons. Admittedly, I know very little about them, though they are all generally cheerful and friendly people.

Those are my ideas, and here’s a little backstory about this project: Though I am serving as its advocate, I have only been a patron of this bakery for a few months. To tell the truth, for several years I had passed by Betty’s store, ignorant of the treasures they sold within. While studying at Cal, I also volunteered 5 hours a week at the Children’s Hospital in Oakland which is located four blocks away from Betty’s bakery. I must have passed by the corner of 51st and telegraph 100 times, and never once went inside. I imagine all the treats I missed out on and the joy I never experienced during those years, and it saddens me that word of this bakery had not reached me. This is one of the motivations behind this project.

next: Part III: Reflections, Conclusions, and Q&A

I became interested in a problem with their business model when one day, two weeks ago, I cruised to Betty’s late in the afternoon, intending to pick up a chicken sandwich for dinner. They were sold out.

Me: Awwww man, I wanted me sum chicken! (lack of eloquence due to fried chicken deficiency)
Jose (behind the counter): next time you want some this late, call us!

He hands me their business card.

I went home, disappointed by my failure to procure chicken. To fill the void in my hands where a sandwich should have been, I examined their business card.

wait a second, where’s the website on this card? I’ve been to their website before, but it’s strangely unmentioned.

Well… yeah Jon, there’s no reason to include it. It’s not like they’re selling computers or keyboards or web services. They’re a bakery with one store and a load of loyal customers, what reason would they have to advertise its website?

(I’ll go more into the Bakesale Betty business model in part three of this series.)

Despite these valid points, I still was surprised that they had a website and yet were not displaying it on their business card. I became even more surprised when I searched for “Oakland bakery”, or “Oakland pastries” and Betty’s website did not show up! (with the exception of Google maps)  Though it did show up for “Oakland chicken sandwich” – way to nail THAT market Betty!

The web page was just not showing up.

Rrecent trends in technology in the SF Bay Area have done much to transform the local into the global. Although their website represents them as a modest neighborhood store, look at Betty’s Yelp page – over 1000 reviews! In addition, there have also been blog posts (here, here and most recently, here to name a few) written about the store all over the web! Betty’s customers are trying to reach out to others on the web and it is spreading. I believe Betty can do well to match up with her rising internet stardom.

Next: Part II – Proposals